On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
> >Um, first of all, it would be given as 8 feet 1 inch tall, and that's
> >TALL. (Pretty darn tall!) That's significantly over 2 meters tall. My
> >father-in-law, who's a pretty tall guy, isn't even 2 meters. (He's 6 feet
> >4 inches, IIRC -- after 6 feet, I just register people as "really tall",
> >and he's "really tall". My husband is *almost* 6 feet tall, so that's
> >why my "really tall" cutoff begins close to there....)
> I used the conversion factors 1 inch = 2 cm (measured from my
> computer screen, who is nominally 14 inches and measures 28 cm)
> and 1 foot = 14 inches (taken from Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh
> Mistress_). Am I right?
No.
And frankly, that's sheer laziness to get that sort of thing wrong.
Without turning around or using the Web, I have three places that I
could find conversion factors like that if I didn't know them (my
calculator, Mathematica, and "units" on the computer). (1 foot = 12
inches. 1 inch = 2.54 cm; IIRC this is how the inch is *defined*
nowadays). There are, of course, a near-infinite number of places on
the web to find the same information. It's excusable that you don't
know these; it's harder to understand your not looking them up, but
just guessing and trying to use them.
--
Andrea Leistra [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"If you can keep your head while all those about you are
losing theirs, perhaps you have misunderstood the situation."
-- Daniel Keys Moran, _The Long Run_
